Turntable advice / opinion on setup / sound.

 @elliottbnewcombjr 

Hi Elliot!

J.R. Boisclair. He is intense when it comes to vinyl. He backs up his products by picking up the phone when you call for help, and being really helpful.

I did note the reference to Groove Tickler but he also said he doesn't have anyone to help with setting up the cart, so I assumed GT doesn't offer that service.  

The mobile idea is great, but not a viable business until we get a teleporter. 

@lewm 

I referred to the headshell offset angle as an angular error, because it IS an angle and it DOES create an error in terms of its contribution to creating a skating force

Indeed, but the tracking error it causes is far smaller than the headshell offset angle itself, so it should not be called the offset angle error because it isn’t!

Without detracting from Lofgren’s work in 1940, I mentioned Percy Wilson’s pioneering work.  His analysis and equations were published over 100 years ago in The Gramophone magazine, September and October 1924 issues. This is generally regarded as the first calculated solution including overhang, offset angle and null points popularised in the English language, but there is a preceding French patent filed in 1907 by Hungarian merchant Bela Harsanyi - well before stereo and electrical recording.

@elliottbnewcombjr 

With a pivoting arm, there is NATURAL (someone else explain it, somewhere else) inward skate on a GROOVELESS surface, The anti-skate is NEEDED to counter the amount of skate

I used the word ’groove’ to denote a direction. which a groove-less surface does not define.  Both groove and groove-less surface exert friction but is a long bow to assume the friction is the same!

The friction-induced force is always vectored along the direction of the groove (ignoring the wiggles).  I believe @lewm uses cantilever to describe the same direction though cantilevers do change direction slightly depending on the antiskating force applied.

Forces can be broken down into components using vector analysis, in this case into a component from the stylus to the pivot, and another at right angles - which pulls sideways and is the skating force.

I did think of starting a separate thread comparing Vertical Tracking Angle errors to Horizontal Tracking Angle errors.  Maybe I should.  So far, nobody here has challenged my analysis, which in summary suggests that a well-set-up pivoted tonearm has HTA errors equivalent to an 8-mm change in cartridge height during play of a 12" record side with a 9" arm.  8-mm is a lot of shims

@kennyc Cool. When I was done with the WAM process obviously the sound/balance/imaging was great. But the unadvertised benefit was that I no longer felt the need to tweak the set up, question it, or even think about it. Quite liberating really.    

More correctly, rather than using the cantilever as a guide, one might say the friction force is tangent to the groove or to the circular path of the stylus tip, if there are no grooves. I don't and didn't think it was as informative to refer to the stylus, since the stylus can be regarded as a point in space whereas the cantilever is a line that at least ought to be tangent to the groove if it is not being bent by skating or anti-skating.  RB, I cannot keep up with your semantic arguments; I think you know what I mean in each case.

@elliottbnewcombjr 

"To ’beat that exclusion’ Ortofon made some 14mm high models.

Where’s the list of 14mm high cartridges? Anyone?"

https://ortofon.com/collections/2m-series

Simply scroll down past the 2Ms.

"My Exxon comments make me seem like a rabid mouthed long haired unwashed hippie.

You could have said ’I like Rega, it’s a shame you don’t’, but you went off the deep end, and seemed to me like a MOONIE. (Rev. Moon devotees).

There were so many of them outside and inside Penn Station, they used to ’slow me down’ trying to catch my train.

This thread, the many Rega fans ’slowed me down’ trying to get simple answers. It was you, finally, who led me to the null point answers, I again thank you.

As I said before, there is no way it should have taken me such repeated, persistent effort to get the answer.

I don’t compare Rega to Apple, but I put them in the same category, there is NO reason to make 14 mm high cartridges combined with a fixed arm height.

’Nasty’ seemed to stir the pot, I overstate things often, but I find it UNFORGIVABLE, like the Valdez, like printing light grey on white, like no printed measurements, like a ’new’ method, only 1 mark (not measurement), on a template that might be lost, rather than the long established industry standard of two null points. They do not, purposely do not, because they do not want to encourage using non-Rega cartridges!!!!! I will Never think otherwise."

How quickly we resort to name calling and disparaging remarks as called out when your own complacency and laziness when fulfilling your due diligence is only a few clicks away as in the Ortofon link I just provided to your query in the above underlined.

You need to bone up on Roy Gandy's philosophy regarding tone arm rigidity and how he believes that is circumvented when a tone arm is designed with too many ranges of adjustability. Oh, and if bearing facts makes me a "MOONIE" then so be it! Also, you all lost the OP three pages ago due to your long winded and pointless rhetoric though he might suddenly chime in to say he's been sitting back observing just to disparage my comments. Chow.